Wednesday, March 27, 2013

This humorous but factual educreations started out as an assignment at school. We all read our own articles about distracted driving and its consequences from 2008-2011. Soon after we came together as a group, shared the information we had gathered, and began the educreations project. We each did our own slide and the final product stressed all the important aspects of distracted driving. We wouldn't have been able to do this project without the iPads.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Mrs. Martin's Kindergarten Class had a lot of fun writing like Dr. Seuss. We used the CatCam app and took some zany pictures of the students. Using the app Drawing Pad, the students first created their drawings on the iPad. These were saved to the camera roll and then inserted into educreations where the students typed their name and rhyme. The students' catcam pictures were added for a little extra fun.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Please join members of the Steward School community in this exciting opportunity to earn books for our school library, for FREE! We Give Books and LeapFrog have partnered up to give you and your children the chance to support the important role that school libraries play in the lives of our children, by reading online during Read for My School. Together they are sharing 150,000 books with schools across the country.

Read for My School kicks off on March 19, 2013! Our school community will join readers across the nation to read online from We Give Books’ digital library. For each book read on behalf of our school, we will receive a printed LeapFrog book for our school library. 150,000 books will go fast, so register today at ReadForMySchool.org. Once the books are gone, we can keep reading for the chance to receive a visit from the We Give Books ReadMobile for our kids!
We Give Books is available all year, but this is our only chance to earn books directly for our school!

When you register please select Steward Primary School- Topsfield on the settings page.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

We are saying Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss all month.
During library period the students created many beautiful decorations for the library to help set the stage for this event. They created truffula trees, mobiles of Dr. Seuss-like animals, rhyming words of ..at and ..op, and creative scenes on posters. The library looks very seusstastic!

The Big Plan...
We asked each class to pair with another grade and join us in the library for a Dr. Seuss Scavenger QR Hunt.

Oh the Places They Go...
Posted around the library were 17 QR codes for the students to scan using the iPad QR reader. We used the app Qrafter. Working with a partner the students scanned the code which opened the link with the Dr. Seuss question. Students hunted for the answers around the room in the form of books, posters, and charts. The collaborative work was exciting to watch. Excitement was high and the students were very focused!
There was even an answer QR code to scan when all the questions were solved.
Dr. Seuss would have had a lot of fun with this activity.

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Try a few of the Dr. Seuss codes on your own iPad or phone.

**Tech tip:

1. The QR codes were created in Google Drive as individual documents.

2. Allow them to be shared with the link.

3. Take the link url and create a QR code in a free QR creator. I used Kaywa.

4. Save each QR code as a word document. Add a speech bubble for some fun.5. Add a fun picture to go with your theme.

5. Post around the room.6. Set the iPad QR reader to open on scan. (gear in the top right corner)7. Watch the fun!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Fourth Graders have been reading biographies and they decided to open their own Wax Museum.

If you have ever visited a wax museum you know just how real the figures are. When I visited Madame Tussard's Was Museum in New York City it took a while to adjust to the fact that the famous people really weren't alive because they certainly looked like they were ready to visit and chat with me. It would have been thrilling to talk with all the presidents.
Wasn't it nice of President Obama to let me sit at his desk?

Mrs. Kelleher (aka Madame Kelleher) had her students dress up as a famous person and they wrote a detailed account of that person's life. On the day of the show the students were frozen in place, remember it was a wax museum. Guests picked up a flashlight and entered the darkened library. The wax figures became animated when the light was shining on them. It was so much fun watching these boys and girls share the facts about their famous person. Each student made eye contact and stayed in character for their entire speech and when done they became frozen once again.

Friday, March 8, 2013

During the month of March the Third Grade students study the properties of matter. As they were nearing the completion of this science unit I created an assessment using the app Socrative. This app allows teachers to create a quiz online in socrative teacher. This may be done on either an iPad or a computer. The set up was very easy.

On the big day each student had an iPad and signed into the quiz with a code I gave them for this test. It was a fun way to assess students and it was a fun way to take a test. The program scores the multiple choice test as the students are working and the teacher receives an excel spread sheet with the results. Everyone did a great job and had fun.

Click on the app to learn more about socrative.

The final part of the test was a written open response question. It was fun seeing students work so hard. One student used the experiment we did together as his open response answer.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Students in Mrs. Ragan's kindergarten class have been reading the book I AM America by Charles R. Smith, Jr. During writing the boys and girls wrote sentences about themselves based on this picture book. The sentences are simple yet very powerful.

Using the apps drawing pad, photoinword, and educreations they created their very own I Am masterpieces. These pieces make you stop and think, "What Am I?"﻿

**Tech Tip: The app photoinword is an app that allows you to add a photo in a word. The photo can then be saved in the camera roll and used in other apps.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

As grade 3 students get ready for the English Language Arts MCAS test this month, teachers are finding ways to reinforce curriculum. The Common Core Standards state: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.3.1a Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.
Mrs. Corliss's Parts of Speech Detectives have been busy again. The task was to write a sentence and include at least one adjective. First they used the app drawing pad and created a picture to illustrate their sentence. We then compiled these sentences into a class educreations project.